Book tickets at the best rates!

Willis Tower
Chicago, Illinois and surrounding
Architecture,  Industrial culture
Architecture, 
Industrial culture

The Willis Tower is a famous skyscraper in the center of Chicago in Illinois. It is also the tallest building in North America on the roofline with a height of 108 floors and 442.3 meters. It was built in 1970-1973 and cost Sears, which was engaged in its construction, $150 million. Until 2009, the skyscraper was called Sears Tower. It got its current name after the purchase by Willis Group Holding. However, residents were so indignant at the renaming that many of them still call the building by its former name. The project was designed by architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. 2,400 employees were involved in the construction of the facility. The owners of the Willis Tower call it the heart of Chicago and the future of work and entertainment.

The object has a unique design. Its skeleton is made of nine profile pipes that form the square base of the building. They are based on a concrete foundation laid deep in the underground rocks and rise to a height of 50 meters, and then the skyscraper begins to narrow: seven profiles reach 66 meters, five - up to 90, the last 20 floors are occupied by two pipes. TV antennas on the roof reach a height of 520 meters. When the Willis Tower was built, it became the tallest building in the world by the roofline, thus taking the title of the world trade center. It was considered the tallest until the construction of the Petronas Twin Tower in Kuala Lumpur was completed in 1997.

On the 103rd floor of the building is the Skydeck observation deck, which opened in 1974. It attracts about 1.7 million visitors annually. In 2009, it was expanded by adding glass rooms. So now you can enjoy views of the city and lake Michigan, actually hovering over a 412-meter chasm. The source of inspiration for this project was hundreds of forehead prints left on Skydeck Windows. This is the highest observation deck in the United States. The ledge is made of three layers of glass half an inch thick, laminated into a single solid block. The ledge is built to withstand a pressure of four tons. On a clear day, the view can cover 50 miles and four states: Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

Address: 233 South Wacker Drive

Published by

Praskovia Ko

All content and media files are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Rating based on 0 reviews
Favoured:
0
Already
6 images
of the Willis Tower
on 7toucans
See on the map

Book and buy tickets at the best rates!

Best hotels in Chicago, Illinois !

We use cookies to improve our website and your experience when using it. Cookies used for the essential operation of this site have already been set.To find out more about the cookies we use and how to delete them, see our privacy policy including cookie use

 I accept cookies from this site.